Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. When Marci Needle and her husband began to contemplate divorce in June, they thought they had enough money to go their separate ways. They owned a million-dollar home near Atlanta and another in Jacksonville, Fla., as well as investment properties.http://louis5j5sheehan5esquire.wordpress.com/
Now the market for both houses has crashed, and the couple are left arguing about whether the homes are worth what they owe on them, and whether there are any assets left to divide, Ms. Needle said.
“We’re really trying very hard to be amicable, but it puts a strain on us,” said Ms. Needle, the friction audible in her voice. “I want him to buy me out. It’s in everybody’s interest to settle quickly. That would be my only income. It’s been incredibly stressful.” http://louis5j5sheehan5esquire.wordpress.com/
Chalk up another victim for the crashing real estate market: the easy divorce. http://louis5j5sheehan5esquire.wordpress.com/
With nearly one in six homes worth less than the mortgage owed on it, according to Moody’s Economy.com, divorce lawyers and financial advisers around the country say the logistics of divorce have been turned around. “We used to fight about who gets to keep the house,” said Gary Nickelson, president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. “Now we fight about who gets stuck with the dead cow.”
As a result, divorce has become more complicated and often more expensive, with lower prospects for money on the other side. Some divorce lawyers say that business has slowed or that clients are deciding to stay together because there are no assets left to help them start over.
“There’s an old joke,” said Randall M. Kessler, Ms. Needle’s lawyer. “Why is a divorce so expensive? Because it’s worth it. Now it better really be worth it.”
In a normal economy, couples typically build equity in their homes, then divide that equity in a divorce, either after selling the house or with one partner buying out the other’s share. But after the recent boom-and-bust cycle, more couples own houses that neither spouse can afford to maintain, and that they cannot sell for what they owe. For couples already under stress, the family home has become a toxic asset.
“It’s much harder to move on with their lives,” said Alton L. Abramowitz, a partner in the New York firm Mayerson Stutman Abramowitz Royer.
Mr. Abramowitz said he was in the middle of several cases where the value of the real estate could not be determined. “All of a sudden,” he said, “prices are all over the place, people aren’t closing, and it becomes virtually impossible to judge how far the market has fallen, because nothing is selling.”
For John and Laurel Goerke, in Santa Barbara, Calif., the housing market crashed in the middle of what Mr. Goerke said had been an orderly legal proceeding. http://louis5j5sheehan5esquire.wordpress.com/ At the height of the market, Mr. Goerke said, they had their house appraised at $2.3 million, which would have given them about $1 million to divide after paying off the mortgage. But by the time they sold last year, the value had fallen by $600,000, cutting their equity by more than half. http://louis5j5sheehan5esquire.wordpress.com/
“That changed everything,” said Mr. Goerke, who is now nearly two years into the divorce process, with legal and other fees of several hundred thousand dollars. “The prospect of us both being able to buy modest homes was eliminated. The money’s not there.”
Now, with both spouses living in rental properties, their lawyers still cannot agree on what their remaining assets are worth. Their wealth is ticking away at $350 an hour, times two.
“It’s got to end,” Mr. Goerke said, “because at some point there’s nothing left to argue about.”
For other couples it does not have to end. Lisa Decker, a certified divorce financial analyst in Atlanta, said she was seeing couples who were determined to stay together even after divorce because they could not sell their home, a phenomenon rarely seen before outside Manhattan.
“We’re finding the husband on one floor, the wife on the other,” Ms. Decker said. “Now one is coming home with a new boyfriend or girlfriend, and it’s creating a layer to relationships that we haven’t seen before. Unfortunately, we’re seeing ‘The War of the Roses’ for real, not just in a Hollywood movie.”
In California, James Hennenhoefer, a divorce lawyer, said couples were taking advantage of the housing crisis to save money by stopping their mortgage payments but continuing to live together for as long as they can.
“Most of the lenders around here are in complete disarray,” Mr. Hennenhoefer said. “They’re not as aggressive about evictions. Everyone’s hanging around in properties hoping the government will buy all that bad paper and then they’ll negotiate a new deal with the government. They just live in different parts of the house and say, ‘We’ll stay here for as long as we can, and save our money, so we have the ability to move when and if the sheriff comes to toss us out.’ ”
Mr. Hennenhoefer said this tactic worked only with first mortgages; on second and third mortgages, the lenders pursue repayment even after the homeowners have lost the home.
Dee Dee Tomasko, a nursing student and mother in suburban Cleveland, expected to leave her marriage with about $200,000 in starter money, primarily from the marital home, which was appraised at about $1 million in 2006. By the time of her divorce last year, however, the house was appraised at $800,000; her share of the equity came to about $105,000.
Though she is relieved to be out of the marriage, if she had known how little money she would get “I might have stuck with it a little more; I don’t know,” Ms. Tomasko said, adding, “Maybe it would’ve made me think a little harder.”
For divorcing spouses with resources, though, there can be opportunities in the falling housing market.
Josh Kaufman and his wife bought a new 6,500-square-foot house outside Cleveland on five and a half acres, with four bedrooms and two three-car garages, that was worth $1.5 million at the height of the market. When they divorced in June, Mr. Kaufman knew his wife could not afford to carry the home. The longer the divorce process continued, the more the house depreciated; by the time he assumed the house, its appraised value was half what the couple had put into it; he did not pay her anything for her share.
“From a negotiating standpoint we knew that she couldn’t afford to stay in it,” Mr. Kaufman said. “It appeared as an opportunity to turn the negative situation around. There was no emotion involved. It was a business decision on what made most financial sense. It wasn’t an attempt to take advantage of someone.”
Still, his lawyer, Andrew A. Zashin, said, “He bought this house at a bargain basement price.”
For Nancy R., who spoke on condition of anonymity because her colleagues do not know her marital status, the impediments to divorce are visible every time she opens her door.
“There’s three other houses for sale on our same road,” she said. “There’s no way our house would sell.”
For now the couple are separated, waiting for real estate prices to recover. But for Ms. R., that means remaining financially dependent on her husband. He moved out; she remains in the house.
“I still feel kept in certain ways, and I don’t want to rock the boat,” she said. “And it’s draining. So suddenly, when there’s an economic crunch, we’re paying for two places. And we’re both eating out more, because it’s no fun to eat alone.”
The same dynamics that marked their marriage now hang over their separation, she said: “He has the ultimate control.”
“We can’t sell the house,” she said, “and whatever settlement I get depends on a good relationship with him, based on his good will. The lines get blurry and confused quickly, which makes emotions fly easily” — especially if she were to start dating.
“Any icing on the cake is going to come from his good will,” she said, “and that means being the peacemaker. I’m the underdog in this situation. We’re basically forced to remain in a relationship after we’ve decided to end it.”
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Thursday, December 25, 2008
factors 7.fac.88 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Power has its perks, even for laboratory-housed monkeys. When moved from individual to group cages, socially dominant male monkeys exhibit a brain-chemistry change that fosters resistance to using drugs such as cocaine, a new study finds.
This alteration increases the amount of so-called dopamine D2 receptors, a molecular gateway on brain cells controlled by the chemical messenger dopamine.
Earlier studies implicated these receptors in pleasurable responses to drugs and other stimuli.http://louis7j7sheehan7esquire.wordpress.com
In contrast, male monkeys at the bottom of the social pecking order display no boost in the D2 receptors when housed with other monkeys, say neuroscientist Michael A. Nader of Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C., and his colleagues. Unlike their more dominant cage mates, the low-ranking monkeys readily self-administer large amounts of cocaine.
These findings raise the possibility that a person's vulnerability to drug abuse can be influenced by brain-altering environmental factors, Nader's group concludes in an upcoming Nature Neuroscience.
"This is the first demonstration in primates that a social stressor, such as a dominance hierarchy, can regulate levels of dopamine D2 receptors," remarks psychiatrist Nora D. Volkow of Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y. "It provides a potential biological mechanism to explain why people in lower social classes are generally at higher risk for drug abuse."
Nader and his coworkers used a scanning technique called positron emission tomography (PET) to study D2 receptors in the brains of 20 male macaque monkeys that had been housed in individual cages for 1� years. PET scans were repeated after the monkeys were moved into larger cages, grouping four animals per cage, and given time to establish social hierarchies.
The scans revealed comparably low numbers of dopamine D2 receptors in all individually housed monkeys and in low-ranking monkeys in the groups. In dominant monkeys, D2-receptor numbers increased sharply. These animals also displayed relatively low concentrations of dopamine in the junctions, or synapses, between brain cells.
Excess synaptic dopamine leads to an oversensitivity of the brain's reward pathway and creates a susceptibility to drug abuse, the researchers theorize.
Loss of control over environmental factors may have triggered such a dopamine pattern in low-ranking monkeys, they hold. When the scientists implanted intravenous lines, subordinate animals quickly learned to press a lever to receive infusions of cocaine in increasing doses and largely ignored a lever controlling delivery of saline solution.http://louis7j7sheehan7esquire.wordpress.com
In dominant monkeys, the surge in dopamine D2 receptors indicates they use dopamine efficiently for cell-to-cell communication, Nader's group contends. These monkeys showed no preference for receiving intravenous cocaine over a saline solution.http://louis7j7sheehan7esquire.wordpress.com
Whether these findings have correlates among people remains an open question, the researchers note. In line with the new study, earlier PET data indicated that people with low dopamine D2-receptor numbers report more pleasurable responses to stimulant drugs than those with high D2 numbers do. "We're going to have to start paying much closer attention to the social rank of individuals in studies of the biology of drug abuse," Volkow says.
This alteration increases the amount of so-called dopamine D2 receptors, a molecular gateway on brain cells controlled by the chemical messenger dopamine.
Earlier studies implicated these receptors in pleasurable responses to drugs and other stimuli.http://louis7j7sheehan7esquire.wordpress.com
In contrast, male monkeys at the bottom of the social pecking order display no boost in the D2 receptors when housed with other monkeys, say neuroscientist Michael A. Nader of Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C., and his colleagues. Unlike their more dominant cage mates, the low-ranking monkeys readily self-administer large amounts of cocaine.
These findings raise the possibility that a person's vulnerability to drug abuse can be influenced by brain-altering environmental factors, Nader's group concludes in an upcoming Nature Neuroscience.
"This is the first demonstration in primates that a social stressor, such as a dominance hierarchy, can regulate levels of dopamine D2 receptors," remarks psychiatrist Nora D. Volkow of Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y. "It provides a potential biological mechanism to explain why people in lower social classes are generally at higher risk for drug abuse."
Nader and his coworkers used a scanning technique called positron emission tomography (PET) to study D2 receptors in the brains of 20 male macaque monkeys that had been housed in individual cages for 1� years. PET scans were repeated after the monkeys were moved into larger cages, grouping four animals per cage, and given time to establish social hierarchies.
The scans revealed comparably low numbers of dopamine D2 receptors in all individually housed monkeys and in low-ranking monkeys in the groups. In dominant monkeys, D2-receptor numbers increased sharply. These animals also displayed relatively low concentrations of dopamine in the junctions, or synapses, between brain cells.
Excess synaptic dopamine leads to an oversensitivity of the brain's reward pathway and creates a susceptibility to drug abuse, the researchers theorize.
Loss of control over environmental factors may have triggered such a dopamine pattern in low-ranking monkeys, they hold. When the scientists implanted intravenous lines, subordinate animals quickly learned to press a lever to receive infusions of cocaine in increasing doses and largely ignored a lever controlling delivery of saline solution.http://louis7j7sheehan7esquire.wordpress.com
In dominant monkeys, the surge in dopamine D2 receptors indicates they use dopamine efficiently for cell-to-cell communication, Nader's group contends. These monkeys showed no preference for receiving intravenous cocaine over a saline solution.http://louis7j7sheehan7esquire.wordpress.com
Whether these findings have correlates among people remains an open question, the researchers note. In line with the new study, earlier PET data indicated that people with low dopamine D2-receptor numbers report more pleasurable responses to stimulant drugs than those with high D2 numbers do. "We're going to have to start paying much closer attention to the social rank of individuals in studies of the biology of drug abuse," Volkow says.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
photodecomposition 3.pho.1 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Sunlight triggers the entry of poisonous mercury into polar lakes, but it also removes most of the toxic compound before fish can consume it, a new study suggests. The researchers warn that increased warming in the Arctic might upset this delicate balance. http://louis8j8sheehan8esquire.blogspot.com
With spring, light returns to the Arctic after a long, dark winter. That polar sunrise, however, has a dark side. It triggers a burst of photochemical reactions that mobilizes atmospheric mercury, speeding its fall into arctic lakes, where fish can consume it.
Recent studies suggest that when atmospheric mercury encounters light, gases such as ozone and sea spray–borne halogens oxidize it to a more reactive and water-soluble form. Attached to rain, snow, or dust, the reactive mercury falls into oceans or lakes, where sulfur-reducing bacteria transform it to methylmercury, the highly toxic form of the metal that accumulates in fish and other organisms (SN: 2/1/03, p. 72: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20030201/bob8.asp). http://louis8j8sheehan8esquire.blogspot.com
To better understand what happens to mercury, a team of researchers led by biogeochemists Chad Hammerschmidt of Woods Hole (Mass.) Oceanographic Institution and William Fitzgerald of the University of Connecticut at Groton studied mercury in four Alaskan lakes roughly 250 kilometers south of the Arctic Ocean.http://louis8j8sheehan8esquire.blogspot.com
The team measured mercury entering the lakes from rainfall and as runoff from the surrounding tundra and then estimated how much methylmercury the bacteria in the lake sediments subsequently produced. The researchers also assessed whether the methylmercury was consumed by fish and other creatures or converted to less-toxic forms by light-based reactions in the lakes.
Hammerschmidt and his colleagues report that the more atmospheric mercury rains down, the more methylmercury the bacteria produce. Two-thirds of mercury in the atmosphere comes from human sources, such as fossil fuel burning, so more pollution would boost poisonous mercury concentrations in lakes, Hammerschmidt says.
More unexpectedly, the team discovered that light-triggered breakdown of methylmercury in the clear Arctic lakes is the main factor keeping the poison in check. Those reactions destroy as much as 80 percent of the poison before aquatic species can get to it, the team reports in the Feb. 15 Environmental Science & Technology.
The mechanisms of that photodecomposition are still poorly understood, Hammerschmidt says. Research on arctic mercury has focused on how it gets to Earth, rather than its terrestrial fate, he says.http://louis7j7sheehan7esquire.blogspot.com
This research is the first to demonstrate the importance of photodecomposition in mercury cycling, agrees Robert Stevens of the Environmental Protection Agency in Research Triangle Park, N.C. "It's good science," he says.
One spur to further study is the possibility that global warming could upset the Arctic's delicate balance. In warmer and wetter weather, more mercury would fall and bacterial production of methylmercury would rise. At the same time, the rains might wash more organic material into lakes and oceans, reducing light penetration.
Hammerschmidt cautions that the same processes may also be occurring in temperate lakes, such as those in Wisconsin or Minnesota.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
With spring, light returns to the Arctic after a long, dark winter. That polar sunrise, however, has a dark side. It triggers a burst of photochemical reactions that mobilizes atmospheric mercury, speeding its fall into arctic lakes, where fish can consume it.
Recent studies suggest that when atmospheric mercury encounters light, gases such as ozone and sea spray–borne halogens oxidize it to a more reactive and water-soluble form. Attached to rain, snow, or dust, the reactive mercury falls into oceans or lakes, where sulfur-reducing bacteria transform it to methylmercury, the highly toxic form of the metal that accumulates in fish and other organisms (SN: 2/1/03, p. 72: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20030201/bob8.asp). http://louis8j8sheehan8esquire.blogspot.com
To better understand what happens to mercury, a team of researchers led by biogeochemists Chad Hammerschmidt of Woods Hole (Mass.) Oceanographic Institution and William Fitzgerald of the University of Connecticut at Groton studied mercury in four Alaskan lakes roughly 250 kilometers south of the Arctic Ocean.http://louis8j8sheehan8esquire.blogspot.com
The team measured mercury entering the lakes from rainfall and as runoff from the surrounding tundra and then estimated how much methylmercury the bacteria in the lake sediments subsequently produced. The researchers also assessed whether the methylmercury was consumed by fish and other creatures or converted to less-toxic forms by light-based reactions in the lakes.
Hammerschmidt and his colleagues report that the more atmospheric mercury rains down, the more methylmercury the bacteria produce. Two-thirds of mercury in the atmosphere comes from human sources, such as fossil fuel burning, so more pollution would boost poisonous mercury concentrations in lakes, Hammerschmidt says.
More unexpectedly, the team discovered that light-triggered breakdown of methylmercury in the clear Arctic lakes is the main factor keeping the poison in check. Those reactions destroy as much as 80 percent of the poison before aquatic species can get to it, the team reports in the Feb. 15 Environmental Science & Technology.
The mechanisms of that photodecomposition are still poorly understood, Hammerschmidt says. Research on arctic mercury has focused on how it gets to Earth, rather than its terrestrial fate, he says.http://louis7j7sheehan7esquire.blogspot.com
This research is the first to demonstrate the importance of photodecomposition in mercury cycling, agrees Robert Stevens of the Environmental Protection Agency in Research Triangle Park, N.C. "It's good science," he says.
One spur to further study is the possibility that global warming could upset the Arctic's delicate balance. In warmer and wetter weather, more mercury would fall and bacterial production of methylmercury would rise. At the same time, the rains might wash more organic material into lakes and oceans, reducing light penetration.
Hammerschmidt cautions that the same processes may also be occurring in temperate lakes, such as those in Wisconsin or Minnesota.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
population decline 00.pop.1 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Trace amounts of natural and synthetic estrogens released into the environment by wastewater-treatment plants are known to cause reproductive abnormalities in fish. Researchers have now found an even more dramatic consequence of exposure to the synthetic estrogen used in birth control pills—the near extinction of a fish population.
Women taking birth control pills excrete the synthetic estrogen 17alpha-ethynylestradiol along with natural estrogens. Male fish exposed to estrogens at concentrations of only a few parts per trillion (ppt) can become intersexual, displaying male and female tissues in their gonads (SN: 3/10/07, p. 152).
"A big question remained," says Karen A. Kidd, an ecotoxicologist at the University of New Brunswick in Canada. "Can these males still successfully reproduce, or are fish populations at risk?"
In 1999, Kidd, then at Fisheries and Oceans Canada in Manitoba, and her colleagues began a study at the Experimental Lakes Area, a facility in northwestern Ontario set aside for whole-lake experiments. For 2 years, the team gathered data on species in one study lake and in two reference lakes. During the summers of 2001 through 2003, the researchers added 17alpha-ethynylestradiol to the study lake three times per week, maintaining a concentration of 5 to 6 ppt.
The researchers focused on a common species of fish, the fathead minnow, which they collected from the lakes at regular intervals from 1999 through 2005. They examined changes to its reproductive system and monitored its population.
By the spring of 2002, the scientists observed delayed sexual development of all the males collected. A year later, some males also had early-stage eggs in their testes. "These are all the responses we expect to see, based on what's been found in other studies," says Kidd.
But beyond those effects, as the researchers report in the May 22 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the number of fathead minnows in the lake plummeted. The estimated fish population dropped by a factor of a thousand from 1999 to 2005. "By the end of the seventh year, only a handful of fathead minnow were left," says Kidd. http://LOUIS1J1SHEEHAN1ESQUIRE.US
Aquatic ecotoxicologist Susan Jobling of Brunel University in Uxbridge, England says that to be clearly environmentally relevant, the study's estrogen concentration would have to be "a little bit lower." Recent studies pin the concentration of 17alpha-ethynylestradiol in the environment to less than 1 ppt, she says, but "that doesn't take away from the importance of the study, that population level effects have been demonstrated."http://LOUIS1J1SHEEHAN1ESQUIRE.US
David L. Sedlak, an environmental chemist at the University of California, Berkeley, agrees that it's an "elegant and useful study," even though the estrogen concentration was on the high side. For waterways that receive most of their flow from sewage-treatment plants, improvements in technology would help. "This is a problem that can be solved with treatment," he says. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Women taking birth control pills excrete the synthetic estrogen 17alpha-ethynylestradiol along with natural estrogens. Male fish exposed to estrogens at concentrations of only a few parts per trillion (ppt) can become intersexual, displaying male and female tissues in their gonads (SN: 3/10/07, p. 152).
"A big question remained," says Karen A. Kidd, an ecotoxicologist at the University of New Brunswick in Canada. "Can these males still successfully reproduce, or are fish populations at risk?"
In 1999, Kidd, then at Fisheries and Oceans Canada in Manitoba, and her colleagues began a study at the Experimental Lakes Area, a facility in northwestern Ontario set aside for whole-lake experiments. For 2 years, the team gathered data on species in one study lake and in two reference lakes. During the summers of 2001 through 2003, the researchers added 17alpha-ethynylestradiol to the study lake three times per week, maintaining a concentration of 5 to 6 ppt.
The researchers focused on a common species of fish, the fathead minnow, which they collected from the lakes at regular intervals from 1999 through 2005. They examined changes to its reproductive system and monitored its population.
By the spring of 2002, the scientists observed delayed sexual development of all the males collected. A year later, some males also had early-stage eggs in their testes. "These are all the responses we expect to see, based on what's been found in other studies," says Kidd.
But beyond those effects, as the researchers report in the May 22 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the number of fathead minnows in the lake plummeted. The estimated fish population dropped by a factor of a thousand from 1999 to 2005. "By the end of the seventh year, only a handful of fathead minnow were left," says Kidd. http://LOUIS1J1SHEEHAN1ESQUIRE.US
Aquatic ecotoxicologist Susan Jobling of Brunel University in Uxbridge, England says that to be clearly environmentally relevant, the study's estrogen concentration would have to be "a little bit lower." Recent studies pin the concentration of 17alpha-ethynylestradiol in the environment to less than 1 ppt, she says, but "that doesn't take away from the importance of the study, that population level effects have been demonstrated."http://LOUIS1J1SHEEHAN1ESQUIRE.US
David L. Sedlak, an environmental chemist at the University of California, Berkeley, agrees that it's an "elegant and useful study," even though the estrogen concentration was on the high side. For waterways that receive most of their flow from sewage-treatment plants, improvements in technology would help. "This is a problem that can be solved with treatment," he says. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
brick 999.bri.0002 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . Excavators of a 3,700-year-old Egyptian town have delivered a surprising find�a painted brick that was one of a pair once used to support a woman's feet while she squatted during childbirth. Until now known only from ancient Egyptian writing, so-called birth bricks were used in childbirth rituals that called on gods to secure the health of newborns. http://sheehan.myblogsite.com/
The newly discovered mud birth brick was identified by the scene on it depicting a mother with her newborn baby, attended by several women and Hathor, a cow goddess associated with birth and motherhood.http://sheehan.myblogsite.com/
Archaeologist Josef Wegner of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, the dig director, suspects that a princess named Renseneb used the brick. It turned up in a residential wing for females in a mayor's mansion (SN: 8/28/99, p. 139). Inscribed clay-seal impressions found near the brick refer to Renseneb, who may have married one of the town's powerful mayors, Wegner says. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
The newly discovered mud birth brick was identified by the scene on it depicting a mother with her newborn baby, attended by several women and Hathor, a cow goddess associated with birth and motherhood.http://sheehan.myblogsite.com/
Archaeologist Josef Wegner of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, the dig director, suspects that a princess named Renseneb used the brick. It turned up in a residential wing for females in a mayor's mansion (SN: 8/28/99, p. 139). Inscribed clay-seal impressions found near the brick refer to Renseneb, who may have married one of the town's powerful mayors, Wegner says. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
china 9992.chi.1110003 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
The United States is always held up as the leading polluter of carbon dioxide—the most important greenhouse gas. Well, no more, according to researchers at the University of California. Their calculations indicate China’s releases began exceeding ours more than a year ago—or 14 years earlier than many scientists had initially predicted.
Projections of China’s likely greenhouse-gas emissions have tended to start with data from around the 1990s. Then computer modelers applied some escalator factors to account for the expected growth in incomes and smokestack industries since the ‘90s. A growing economy would be expected to drive a fairly predictable increase in CO2 pollution, especially in a fossil-fuel-based economy like China’s.
The problem: China’s economic development has skyrocketed. The growth in personal and industrial incomes has far exceeded the roughly 5 percent per year that had once seemed reasonable, report Maximilian Auffhammer of UC Berkeley and Richard T. Carson of UC San Diego. Indeed, the growth since 2000 in China’s gross domestic product has been closer to 11 percent, they point out in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.
China’s “abandonment of energy efficiency programs in favor of economic growth has resulted in an unprecedented increase in emissions of local air pollutants and correspondingly greenhouse-gas emissions,” they report.
The UC researchers modeled China’s releases based on province-level data that is annually updated and publicly available. They argue that “This feature is a main advantage over forecasts using infrequently updated sources of data.”
However, one “concern” in using such official statistics from developing countries, such as China, Auffhammer and Carson acknowledge, “is that chronic underfunding of data collection agencies may lead to fabricated data.” The UC team attempted to evaluate the likelihood that it was relying on particularly skewed data by communicating directly with Chinese officials. Those officials had been reporting releases of a composite pollutant described only as “waste gas emissions.” The UC researchers found out how the officials calculated these, and then used this value, which is based on fuel use, as a “proxy for CO2 at the province level.”
Westerners might have predicted that the biggest emissions would trace to activities in Beijing. Not according to the new analysis. Based on projections from 2004 waste gas emissions, the top greenhouse-gas polluting provinces were Inner Mongolia, followed by, in order, Shanghai, Shanxi, Ningxia, Hebei, Liaoning, Tianjin, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Guangxi.
Of course, it’s misguided to lay all of the blame for China’s skyrocketing greenhouse-gas emissions on China. After all, consider who has been buying the goods that China’s burgeoning manufacturing industry has been churning out? Can U.S. consumers even lay their hands on a new kitchen appliance, television, pair of sneakers, or lamp from anywhere but China, these days? http://ljsheehan.livejournal.com/
America, in a sense, has shifted the pollution associated with its consumption patterns from smokestacks at home to smokestacks overseas. Sure, China’s growing middle and upper classes will soon put plenty of pressure on the production of these goods for their own use. But we gave them a good head start.
As with so many things, pollution has a multinational cause in addition to a global effect. It’s time we all evaluated how much we need and whether there are relatively low-resource options to meeting those needs. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Projections of China’s likely greenhouse-gas emissions have tended to start with data from around the 1990s. Then computer modelers applied some escalator factors to account for the expected growth in incomes and smokestack industries since the ‘90s. A growing economy would be expected to drive a fairly predictable increase in CO2 pollution, especially in a fossil-fuel-based economy like China’s.
The problem: China’s economic development has skyrocketed. The growth in personal and industrial incomes has far exceeded the roughly 5 percent per year that had once seemed reasonable, report Maximilian Auffhammer of UC Berkeley and Richard T. Carson of UC San Diego. Indeed, the growth since 2000 in China’s gross domestic product has been closer to 11 percent, they point out in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.
China’s “abandonment of energy efficiency programs in favor of economic growth has resulted in an unprecedented increase in emissions of local air pollutants and correspondingly greenhouse-gas emissions,” they report.
The UC researchers modeled China’s releases based on province-level data that is annually updated and publicly available. They argue that “This feature is a main advantage over forecasts using infrequently updated sources of data.”
However, one “concern” in using such official statistics from developing countries, such as China, Auffhammer and Carson acknowledge, “is that chronic underfunding of data collection agencies may lead to fabricated data.” The UC team attempted to evaluate the likelihood that it was relying on particularly skewed data by communicating directly with Chinese officials. Those officials had been reporting releases of a composite pollutant described only as “waste gas emissions.” The UC researchers found out how the officials calculated these, and then used this value, which is based on fuel use, as a “proxy for CO2 at the province level.”
Westerners might have predicted that the biggest emissions would trace to activities in Beijing. Not according to the new analysis. Based on projections from 2004 waste gas emissions, the top greenhouse-gas polluting provinces were Inner Mongolia, followed by, in order, Shanghai, Shanxi, Ningxia, Hebei, Liaoning, Tianjin, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Guangxi.
Of course, it’s misguided to lay all of the blame for China’s skyrocketing greenhouse-gas emissions on China. After all, consider who has been buying the goods that China’s burgeoning manufacturing industry has been churning out? Can U.S. consumers even lay their hands on a new kitchen appliance, television, pair of sneakers, or lamp from anywhere but China, these days? http://ljsheehan.livejournal.com/
America, in a sense, has shifted the pollution associated with its consumption patterns from smokestacks at home to smokestacks overseas. Sure, China’s growing middle and upper classes will soon put plenty of pressure on the production of these goods for their own use. But we gave them a good head start.
As with so many things, pollution has a multinational cause in addition to a global effect. It’s time we all evaluated how much we need and whether there are relatively low-resource options to meeting those needs. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Libraries 883.lib.1009 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
In what has to be one of the most wrong-headed approaches to cost-cutting, the Environmental Protection Agency decided to close many of its libraries and curtail hours and holdings at others. That these facilities were sometimes the only publicly accessible repository of important gray-literature filings and reports on environmental issues and data made ludicrous the agency’s claim that its library shutdowns wouldn’t affect research by its employees or the public.
Not surprisingly, outside public-interest groups—notably, the DC-based Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility—and internal agency scientists began decrying the proposal almost as soon as word of this planned cost-cutting emerged, two years ago. But EPA began boxing up its publications and shuttering the libraries anyway.
There was a promise to digitize all important holdings, so that they could become instantaneously available to users in the future. But we all know how well such digitizing efforts go. They’re slow, expensive, and take lots of work to correct frequent mistakes by digital page scanners and readers. So in practice, much of the material would be in limbo for a long while, if not forever.
Last year, Congress took an interest in the issue and earmarked $1 million for EPA to open those libraries again. As of now, three of EPA’s 10 regional libraries are closed—those in Chicago, Dallas, and Kansas City (Kansas)—as well as the agency’s headquarters and chemical libraries in Washington, DC. Bending to pressure, EPA has agreed to begin reopening the shuttered facilities.
Two months ago, the Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog organization, chastised EPA for the way it had set about altering its library system and recommended that the agency halt further efforts to shut down or alter the network "until it takes corrective actions to . . . justify its decision to reorganize the network" and improve outreach to users and oversight of the reorganization.http://www.soulcast.com/Louis3J3Sheehan/
In a report to Congress, about a month later, EPA vowed to re-open its facilities “on or before Sept. 30.” However, the libraries may be in new locations, it said, and the two DC libraries will be consolidated at one site. Hours may vary, but EPA has pledged to “provide access for EPA staff and public patrons at least four days per week on a walk-in basis or by appointment during core business hours.” http://www.soulcast.com/Louis3J3Sheehan/
Of course, these libraries cost just a few million dollars per year to maintain. The agency’s budget? Only a projected $8 billion, this coming year. Clearly, mothballing all of its libraries would remove just a drop from the bucket of spending by this, one of the administration’s smaller agencies.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Not surprisingly, outside public-interest groups—notably, the DC-based Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility—and internal agency scientists began decrying the proposal almost as soon as word of this planned cost-cutting emerged, two years ago. But EPA began boxing up its publications and shuttering the libraries anyway.
There was a promise to digitize all important holdings, so that they could become instantaneously available to users in the future. But we all know how well such digitizing efforts go. They’re slow, expensive, and take lots of work to correct frequent mistakes by digital page scanners and readers. So in practice, much of the material would be in limbo for a long while, if not forever.
Last year, Congress took an interest in the issue and earmarked $1 million for EPA to open those libraries again. As of now, three of EPA’s 10 regional libraries are closed—those in Chicago, Dallas, and Kansas City (Kansas)—as well as the agency’s headquarters and chemical libraries in Washington, DC. Bending to pressure, EPA has agreed to begin reopening the shuttered facilities.
Two months ago, the Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog organization, chastised EPA for the way it had set about altering its library system and recommended that the agency halt further efforts to shut down or alter the network "until it takes corrective actions to . . . justify its decision to reorganize the network" and improve outreach to users and oversight of the reorganization.http://www.soulcast.com/Louis3J3Sheehan/
In a report to Congress, about a month later, EPA vowed to re-open its facilities “on or before Sept. 30.” However, the libraries may be in new locations, it said, and the two DC libraries will be consolidated at one site. Hours may vary, but EPA has pledged to “provide access for EPA staff and public patrons at least four days per week on a walk-in basis or by appointment during core business hours.” http://www.soulcast.com/Louis3J3Sheehan/
Of course, these libraries cost just a few million dollars per year to maintain. The agency’s budget? Only a projected $8 billion, this coming year. Clearly, mothballing all of its libraries would remove just a drop from the bucket of spending by this, one of the administration’s smaller agencies.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
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